star trek fan films – Trekking with Dennis

Don’t Miss: JTVFX’s Wolf 359 Fan Film

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Next Generation Seasons 3-4, Deep Space Nine Season 1, and Picard Season 3.

I don’t cover fan films very often here on the website. Trekkies have created some great productions over the years, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just never been a priority for me – especially when there are still some recent official episodes I need to catch up on! But I wanted to take a moment to highlight one such fan-made production today, as it’s something I greatly enjoyed.

Over on YouTube, a channel called JTVFX has put together a four-part series all about the Battle of Wolf 359: the famous battle between Starfleet and the Borg that was depicted in The Best of Both Worlds. The creator took what we saw of the battle in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine’s premiere and massively expanded upon it, crafting what is genuinely one of the best space battles set in the Star Trek universe that I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this fan film easily eclipses many of the space battles seen in official Star Trek films and TV shows.

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing two Starfleet vessels preparing to leave Earth. — Federation ships in orbit above Earth.

I wanted to highlight this because, at time of writing, The Massacre: Part II has just been published on YouTube – so it’s the perfect time to check it out if you haven’t already. The first part garnered a whopping 1.5 million views, and with Part II being bigger, longer, and even more intense, I think it’s something that no fan of The Next Generation era and The Best of Both Worlds should miss out on. I took time away from working on my review of Alien: Earth to step back into the Star Trek galaxy, and I’m so glad that I did!

We are gonna get into spoiler-y territory, so if you want to watch the whole fan film without any spoilers, this is your last chance to duck out. But I hope you’ll come back after you’ve seen all four parts!

What I really loved about this fan film was how it incorporated everything we know about the Battle of Wolf 359 from canon. We had Picard/Locutus aboard the Borg Cube, being influenced by the Borg Queen. Admiral Hanson leading the Federation fleet. Sisko aboard the doomed Saratoga. And even a young Liam Shaw – future captain of the Titan-A – was glimpsed as he escaped his ship. It felt like JTVFX had gone out of their way to tie together The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Picard in a way that felt natural.

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing a starship bridge on fire. — A burning starship bridge.

Then we come to the Klingons’ involvement. At this point in the 24th Century, the Klingons and the Federation are allies, so it makes sense that they’d be willing to come to Starfleet’s aid. While a request for help from the Klingons was mentioned in The Best of Both Worlds, we never saw any Klingon ships on screen in the episode. I really liked seeing the Klingons here; their fleet racing to join the battle at the last minute was reminiscent of the Enterprise-E’s arrival in First Contact, and hit all of the same emotional notes for me.

Obviously, this is, first and foremost, an animation and VFX project. And there were so many beautiful starship models on display. I’ve said this before in other contexts, but I love seeing a big, beautiful, and diverse fleet of starships. It’s so much more visually interesting to see different classes and styles of ships working together than just copies of the exact same ship, and when most of the designs were from The Next Generation era, that just made it even better!

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing the Federation task force. — Part of the Federation fleet.

In The Best of Both Worlds, Admiral Hanson’s fleet always seemed to me like the kind of thing Starfleet had tried to throw together at the last moment. The Federation just doesn’t expect this kind of deep incursion into its territory, and with no major wars in this era, it makes sense that Starfleet wouldn’t just have a massive defence force armed and ready to go. I’ve always assumed that Starfleet was basically forcing ships out of mothballs, staffing them up with whoever was available, and throwing them into Hanson’s fleet – the time constraints surely meant that recalling ships from long-range exploration voyages was impossible.

And that feeling of a hastily thrown-together collection of random ships was absolutely present in JTVFX’s film. We got a collection of ships from the 23rd and mid-24th Centuries: Excelsior-class, Ambassador-class, Constellation-class, Miranda-class, Oberth-class, Nebula-class, Constitution-class refits, and a few others that I’m sure I’m forgetting. The Klingon fleet, too, contained D7-class ships, Birds-of-Prey, and just one more recent Vor’cha-class as its flagship. I just adored the way these fleets felt, especially the Federation ships. You could feel how Admiral Hanson had been scrounging around, trying to find any spaceworthy vessel to throw at the Borg. In that context… does it make the losses more understandable? I’d argue that maybe it does!

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing a Constellation-class ship. — A Constellation-class ship.

One thing we never really got to see in canon was whether the fleet at Wolf 359 made much of a dent in the Borg Cube, and even though the outcome of the battle was known, the moments where the Federation and Klingon ships seemed to find an advantage or a weakness in the Borg’s defences still felt incredible. The whole battle was exceptionally tense, with some of the named characters genuinely feeling like real people. Given that the focus was on the starships, not their crews, that’s a hard thing to achieve.

So let’s talk about the animation work.

I’m not an expert in CGI or any of that, not at all. But as a Trekkie, I know what a good space battle looks and feels like when I see it! And for me, JTVFX absolutely nailed it. The Battle of Wolf 359 felt… well, like how I’ve always imagined the Battle of Wolf 359: a desperate last stand against an impossibly powerful adversary, with Starfleet throwing everything it had at the Borg Cube to absolutely no avail.

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing the Borg Cube under attack. — The Borg Cube is hit with phaser fire.

The Borg Cube looked fantastic, its tractor beams, weapons, shields, and repairs all felt like updated versions of what we saw in The Next Generation, and I loved seeing Locutus aboard the ship, coordinating the battle. The Federation and Klingon ships all manoeuvred and flew through space exactly like they did in The Next Generation era, and many of the sweeping action shots reminded me of Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War battles, which I think JTVFX must’ve drawn inspiration from.

It’s one thing to make a CGI model of a starship – but it’s altogether more complicated to make that ship fly and move around in the way we, as Trekkies, are used to seeing. But whether it was the smallest shuttles and escape pods or the largest Klingon and Borg ships, all of the vessels on screen – and there could be many on screen at once – felt absolutely perfect… and like they’d flown out of a Star Trek production from that era. I loved it… if you couldn’t tell already!

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing Locutus and the Klingon ships. — The Klingon fleet – as seen on the Borg viewscreen.

I also adored seeing the recreations of Next Gen-era LCARS displays and computer graphics. I think that added a lot, and seeing a few moments in the battle from behind a computer screen or a tactical display were really fun inclusions. It also adds to the feeling that the Battle of Wolf 359 was playing out exactly as it had in The Best of Both Worlds, complete with the limitations of computer graphics at the time the episode was made.

I’m not always a fan of this. Sometimes, it’s nice to see franchises modernise and move with the times, and trying to use deliberately anachronistic things like CRT monitors, cassette tapes, or ’80s graphics can rip me out of it if I’m watching a modern production. But here? It worked seamlessly, and the displays and monitors felt like they came right out of starships of the 24th Century! The Klingon displays and graphics looked great, too.

Still frames from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing a pair of tactical displays. — A pair of tactical displays.

This was an incredibly creative project, one that blended The Next Generation with other shows, films, novels, and even video games to create an intricate and detailed recreation of one of the Star Trek franchise’s most epic off-screen space battles! The only thing I wasn’t expecting, or didn’t imagine back in the day, was the arrival of the Klingons – but as I said, I think it worked exceptionally well, fits in with canon, and felt great in the moment as the Klingon fleet arrived. The rest of it, though, with the Starfleet vessels, the absolute shellacking they got, and the assimilation and deaths of many of their crews? It felt exactly the way I imagined this battle would when I first saw The Best of Both Worlds in 1992 – which is when it first aired here in the UK.

So if you’ve missed JTVFX’s channel or the earlier parts of this Wolf 359 adaptation… what are you waiting for?! Head over to YouTube and check it out!

Still frame from JTVFX's Wolf 359 fan film showing an escape pod being assimilated. — Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for Starfleet.

Given Paramount’s occasionally antagonistic stance toward fan films, I think the sooner you watch it, the better. These things can, sometimes, be subject to copyright claims and other issues, so there’s no guarantee it’ll be around and available to watch indefinitely. I hope the new Skydance/Paramount corporation will do better on that front… but you can never be sure, unfortunately.

I had a great time with JTVFX’s masterpiece, and this absolutely wonderful recreation of the Battle of Wolf 359. If you enjoyed The Best of Both Worlds and you’ve always wondered what the battle looked like… here’s your chance to see it for real! And if you just like epic space battles in Star Trek, I genuinely believe this is one of the absolute best – eclipsing even some recent big-budget official productions.

Don’t miss out… and as always, Live Long and Prosper, friends!

Wolf 359: The Prelude Parts I & II and Wolf 359: The Massacre Parts I & II are available to watch now on YouTube through JTVFX’s channel, which is linked below. Still frames above courtesy of JTVFX on YouTube. The Star Trek franchise – including The Best of Both Worlds and all other episodes, films, characters, and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Click or tap here to go to JTVFX’s YouTube channel, where you can find the Wolf 359 fan film. (Warning: External Website)

Axanar, Discovery, and the fan community coming back together

Mon 21.12.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Update 2022: Unfortunately the video that I’m referring to has been set to “private” since I wrote this article.

I sporadically check in with fan project Star Trek Axanar. After Tim Russ’ and Walter Koenig’s Star Trek Renegades, Axanar was the fan film I was most interested in seeing when it was announced a few years ago. I was surprised to see Alec Peters – the creator and star of Axanar – had released a video titled In Defense of Alex Kurtzman – Why Star Trek is going to be OK on the fan film’s official YouTube channel a few days ago, and while I don’t normally do “responses,” I thought it was very interesting and worth drawing your attention to.

If you aren’t familiar with the development of Axanar, here’s a quick recap – and it should explain why the aforementioned video came as a bit of a surprise. In 2014, a fan film titled Prelude to Axanar was released. Produced by Alec Peters, the film served as a prologue to a longer crowd-funded fan film he and his team hoped to create. Star Trek Axanar would look at Garth of Izar, the famed Starfleet captain who was encountered by Kirk and co. in The Original Series’ third season episode Whom Gods Destroy. Fleet Captain Garth was the hero of an event known as the Battle of Axanar, and Peters intended to depict the events surrounding the battle in this fan film, which would feature a number of Star Trek actors.

However, CBS took exception to Axanar and ended up suing Peters and the team behind the fan film. The details of the lawsuit are complicated, but suffice to say CBS went after the production on copyright grounds, and the end result was a set of rules handed down that all fan films would be expected to follow. In addition, the Axanar team lost a lot of time and money that had been originally intended for the film.

*Prelude to Axanar* was released on YouTube in 2014.

All of this took place in the run-up to the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, and proved incredibly divisive for the fan community. Many folks backed Peters and Axanar, feeling that CBS was being unfair and attacking Star Trek’s most passionate fans. Others suggested that the motivation behind the lawsuit was that CBS was concerned that Axanar would be better than Discovery. Though it wasn’t the main reason why some Trekkies aren’t fans of Discovery and other modern Star Trek productions, the real-life battle over Axanar was certainly a factor.

CBS – now ViacomCBS – has certainly been tone-deaf when it comes to the fandom on occasion. I’ve talked at length about the decision to broadcast Lower Decks in North America only, and we can also point to things like the forced shutdown of fan project Stage 9 at a time when ViacomCBS doesn’t seem to be making any Star Trek games or comparable interactive experiences. So I can certainly understand the position of fans who took an anti-CBS position in the wake of the Axanar lawsuit.

I’ve written previously about divisions within the Star Trek fandom, and how people often present it as “old” Star Trek versus “new” Star Trek. Since 2017 Star Trek has been, in many respects, different from how it was in the 1960s or even the 1990s. And as I always say, individual tastes are subjective – we like different things, even within a single franchise. Some fans love The Wrath of Khan, others like The Motion Picture, just to give a single example. As the Star Trek franchise approaches its fifty-fifth anniversary and its 800th episode, it’s no wonder there are debates about which series or style of storytelling are the best!

ViacomCBS hasn’t always done right by Star Trek fans.

What I was so pleased to see from Alec Peters and Axanar in this video was a respect for what ViacomCBS and the Star Trek franchise are doing. Alex Kurtzman’s leadership has seen three new Star Trek shows premiere, with at least four others in the pipeline. It looks certain that the franchise will live to see its sixtieth anniversary in 2026 with new episodes still being broadcast, and as we enter the 2020s the franchise is, perhaps, on the cusp of a new era that could rival its 1990s heyday.

There is room within a fandom like Star Trek for Discovery and Axanar to coexist. We aren’t gatekeepers, telling other Trekkies that they aren’t “real fans” because the show or film they like best isn’t “real Star Trek.” That has never been what the franchise is all about, and anyone saying such nonsense has missed the point. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees; to get so bogged down in the minutia and detail that we miss the big picture.

The Star Trek fandom has always been a welcoming community. I remember my first visit to a Star Trek fan meetup in England in the mid-1990s, and as a younger guy I was welcomed by other fans to their event. This would have been sometime after Star Trek: Generations has been in cinemas, and while I was a huge fan of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I wasn’t fully caught up on The Original Series outside of its films. Despite that, fans of The Original Series who I met didn’t tell me that I wasn’t a “real fan” or that I had never seen “real Star Trek.” They were incredibly welcoming, and most people seemed thrilled that the franchise was still alive and kicking.

The Next Generation was controversial when it premiered in 1987. People who entered the fandom in the 1990s or later – as I did – missed that controversy, but it happened. Deep Space Nine was controversial too, with its static setting and darker tone. I know some Trekkies who utterly hated the Dominion War arc, feeling it went counter to the franchise’s optimistic tone.

The point is that we all have things within the franchise that we like and things that we aren’t keen on. But we would never dream of telling someone who’s a fan of The Next Generation and Voyager but dislikes Deep Space Nine that they somehow aren’t a “real fan.” And the same is true of the Star Trek projects of today. Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks are “real” Star Trek, just as much as any other series or film. It’s okay to disagree about every aspect of those productions, and people will always do so. But they are part of the franchise, and just because they aren’t to some people’s taste doesn’t make them invalid.

Alec Peters and the team behind Axanar have largely avoided commenting on Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks. I was pleasantly surprised to see them do so this time, and even more so to learn that Peters is a fan of Picard. There is a lot to like in modern Star Trek, and a lot to like in past Star Trek too. And Axanar still looks like an interesting proposition, one I will certainly tune in to see when the final version of the film (or episodes) are released.

There are so many things in the modern world to divide us. But I would argue that, as Trekkies, we have much more in common with one another than we do with, for example, fans of celebrity reality television shows! There are, sadly, people who have begun to make money cashing in on this division, widening the gap between different groups of fans and trying to convince their audiences that only one kind of Star Trek fan is a “real fan.” I’m glad to see that Axanar isn’t on board with that, because there is room in the franchise for all of us. We can be passionate about what we like and dislike, and everyone is entitled to their own opinions about what makes for a good Star Trek story. But there’s no need to get nasty or aggressive toward someone who expresses a different opinion.

Watching the video I was struck by how mature Peters was in his tone. Axanar may have been controversial, but there’s no denying that he – and the team he built to bring the project to fruition – are deeply passionate Star Trek fans. What I took away from his video, though, was that he can appreciate that Alex Kurtzman is a fan too. Kurtzman and Peters may have very different attitudes to Star Trek and storytelling, but to express respect across that divide is something I believe many fans needed to see.

I liked what he had to say about giving Kurtzman time, too. Though I don’t necessarily agree that every Star Trek show’s first two seasons “suck,” as Peters put it, we certainly should give the new team at ViacomCBS time to tell more of the stories that they want to tell. For a lot of younger fans, Star Trek has always been a complete product. Every episode was available on DVD or streaming, and it’s easy for someone younger to look back at the franchise as a single entity, not appreciating the decades of work that went into it. Star Trek developed gradually, over a long period of time, in order to become the franchise it was in the 1990s. For fans who didn’t see any part of that process, for whom Star Trek has always existed in its current form, it’s perhaps easier to criticise modern productions as they find their feet and grow.

We are certainly in a new era of television storytelling, and this is another point Peters brought up. Star Trek – like any franchise – has to adapt to meet audience expectations in the 2020s; many episodes and stories that we look back on fondly would struggle if made today. As Trekkies, we’re a tiny portion of Star Trek’s audience. The franchise has to have broad appeal to a wider audience beyond this niche if it’s going to survive, and someone like Alex Kurtzman was brought on board because the people at ViacomCBS believe he has the creative vision to help the franchise grow. It’s never nice to be told “this wasn’t made for you,” but in a sense it’s true – and always has been. Even The Original Series was produced with a wider audience in mind, and we can trace the franchise’s move away from ethereal sci-fi toward more action-oriented stories to at least 1982’s The Wrath of Khan.

The point is, Star Trek has always been evolving. It’s a franchise that has tried many different things over the years, and the current era is no different. As Alec Peters pointed out, Kurtzman and his team are listening. That’s why we got Strange New Worlds, that’s why some of the storytelling decisions were made in Discovery, and even while Kurtzman and his team focus on bringing Star Trek to new fans and a wider audience, they are trying to balance that with feedback from fans.

It’s not up to Alec Peters or myself to defend Alex Kurtzman and his vision for the franchise, at the end of the day. It’s okay to dislike Discovery, Picard, or any other Star Trek project that you feel didn’t appeal to you or didn’t work very well. But I think we could all agree that the fandom would be a nicer place for everyone if we didn’t try to play gatekeeper and tell genuine Trekkies that they aren’t welcome because they like the “wrong” show or film. It’s a big galaxy, and there’s room for all of us.

You can find Alec Peters’ video embedded below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnFuYw0TX34

The Star Trek franchise – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. Star Trek Axanar, Prelude to Axanar, and the Axanar logos were created by fans. The video above is hosted on YouTube, and merely embedded (linked) here on Trekking with Dennis. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.